The mid-term elections are finally over, and Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I don’t know about all of you, but I’m especially thankful for the end of campaign ads this year. Of course, there is so much more to be thankful for, including all the amazing work our members do each and every day to protect and restore wetlands. So thank you!!

As an example, I just got back from a joint wetlands meeting of the New England Biological Assessment Wetlands Workgroup (NEBAWWG) and the Mid-Atlantic Wetlands Workgroup (MAWWG), organized by the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission (NEIWPCC), in Cooperstown, NY. Participants included representatives from state agencies, federal agencies, tribes, academia, private consultants and non-profit organizations. The high level of expertise, innovation and enthusiasm presented by participants in the form of presentations, discussions and participation in break out groups was truly impressive. I am honored to have been included in such an amazing group of professionals.

We have a lot of great articles to share with you in this month’s edition of Wetland Breaking News. We hope you enjoy reading them and perhaps they’ll spark a Thanksgiving dinner conversation or two!

Happy Thanksgiving,

Marla J. StelkEditorWetland Breaking News

Editor's Choice

NFWF, NOAA Announce $28.9 Million in Grants for the 2018 National Coastal Resilience Fund

Contact: Rob Blumenthal, NFWF and Jerry Slaf, NOAA – NOAA – November 9, 2018The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, NOAA and their partners today announced $28.9 million in new grants for the restoration or expansion of natural features such as coastal marshes and wetlands, dune and beach systems, oyster and coral reefs, mangroves, forests, coastal rivers, and barrier islands that help minimize the impacts of storms, rising sea levels and other extreme events on nearby communities and infrastructure in 22 states and Puerto Rico. The 35 grants will generate $38.3 million in matching contributions for a total conservation impact of $67.2 million. Read full story here.

Voters Just Elected Seven More Scientists to Congress

By Christina Maxouris and Brandon Griggs – CNN – November 8, 2018The next Congress will include seven newly elected scientists, including a nuclear engineer and a biochemist. Their supporters say these new scientist-legislators, all of them Democrats, will bring a fact-based approach to public policy and impact such issues as nuclear disarmament and climate change. Read full story here.

Climate Change and the Elections: Five Takeaways

By Brad Plumer and Lisa Friedman – The New York Times – November 7, 2018The results of Tuesday’s elections could have a significant influence on how the United States deals with global warming in several ways. In the Trump era, much of the action to fight climate change has been happening at the state level. On that front, the results were mixed: Several key climate policies on the ballot, including a carbon tax in Washington State and an aggressive renewable power target in Arizona, were defeated soundly. But Democrats who favor clean energy also took control of a number of key governorships and state legislatures, opening doors for expanded action. Read full story here.

Trump Signs the Water Infrastructure Act

By Emily Moon – Pacific Standard – October 23, 2018President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan water infrastructure bill into law on Tuesday, authorizing billions of dollars for state-level projects aimed at improving the nation's rivers, harbors, and drinking water. The law will also defund programs Congress deems "inefficient," the Hillreports. Read full article here.

National News

Exclusive: At U.N. Climate Talks, Trump Team Plans Sideshow on Coal

By Timothy Gardner – Reuters – November 15, 2018The Trump administration plans to set up a side-event promoting fossil fuels at the annual U.N. climate talks next month, repeating a strategy that infuriated global-warming activists during last year’s talks, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. As with the 2017 gathering in Bonn, Germany, the administration plans to highlight the benefits of technologies that more efficiently burn fuels including coal, the sources said. Read full story here.

Fishermen Sue Oil Companies Over Rising Ocean Temperatures

By Benjamin Hulac, E&E News – Scientific American – November 15, 2018Commercial fishermen in California and Oregon sued dozens of oil and gas companies yesterday for hurting the fishing market in the Pacific Ocean by raising temperatures on Earth. The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) is seeking financial compensation for its losses from 30 companies, including oil and gas supermajors, according to the suit filed in a California state court. Read full article here.

New Resources Support Tribes in Preparing for Climate Change

By Michelle Ma, University of Washington – PHYS.org – November 15, 2018Which Pacific Northwest streams will warm the most in the next 50 years, and where would restoration work make a difference for salmon? Where will wildfires and pests be most aggressive in forests as the Earth warms, and how can better management help? As the natural world responds to climate change, American Indian tribes across the country are grappling with how to plan for a future that balances inevitable change with protecting the resources vital to their cultural traditions. Read full story here.

Ocean at the Door: New Homes and the Rising Sea

Climate Central – November 13, 2018In 2012, Hurricane Sandy slammed into New Jersey, producing a major storm surge and damaging or destroying many thousands of homes. Over the years that followed, builders put up new houses and reconstructed damaged ones — in many areas that will be vulnerable to more flooding in the future. The post-Sandy rebuilding was a striking example of a broader pattern. Across the United States, coastal communities have recently built tens of thousands of houses in areas at risk of chronic future flooding driven by sea level rise from climate change. That has put homeowners, renters, and investors in danger of steep personal and financial losses in the years ahead. And while municipalities are increasingly developing plans to cope with sea level rise, the pattern of actual recent construction may be a more robust guide to which places are taking the threat most seriously. Read full story here.

USGS: Florence Set at Least 28 Flood Records in Carolinas

Contact: Jason Burton – U.S. Geological Survey – November 13, 2018The U.S. Geological Survey has confirmed what many residents of the Carolinas already suspected: Hurricane Florence’s rainfalls brought with them record flooding. Preliminary data indicates that 18 USGS streamgages in North Carolina and 10 in South Carolina registered record-setting water levels, called peaks of record. Another 45 streamgages in North Carolina and four in South Carolina recorded streamflows – the volume of water moving past a fixed point -- within the top five measured at those specific sites. The information comes from a new report that focused on peak streamflow and water level data measured at 84 U.S. Geological Survey streamgages in the Carolinas. These gauges all had water level records stretching back ten years or more, and they all recorded water levels during Hurricane Florence that were among the top five measured for that site. This report can be used by emergency managers and water resources engineers who often need to know the expected frequency and magnitude of peak streamflows observed during a flood. Decision makers can also use this information for city planning, to update building codes and to help prepare for future storms. Read full new release here. Read report here.

USACE Announces Lake Erie Wetland Restoration

November 6, 2018The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) announced plans to restore wetlands along Lake Erie’s shoreline in Port Clinton, Ohio. To be completed over the next five years, the project will restore 12 miles of coastal wetlands and add an additional 1.4 miles. Construction will begin within the next year and will help restore Port Clinton as a sub-habitat flyway for Mississippi and Atlantic migratory flyways, as well as improve storm water runoff quality. The restoration includes initial construction, invasive species treatment, native species revegetation, adaptive management and monitoring, as reported by the Port Clinton News Herald. The Ohio EPA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, city of Port Clinton and USACE collaborated to secure the $1.3 million from the Great Lakes Fishery and Ecosystem Restoration and the OEPA Water Resource Restoration Sponsor Program. Read full story here.

Every President Since JFK Was Warned About Climate Change

By Benjamin Hulac – E&E News – November 6, 2018John F. Kennedy was warned about "climate control" in February 1961, becoming perhaps the first American president to learn about people's impact on planetary temperatures. The warnings never stopped. Every president since then has been exposed to similar scientific findings. Sometimes it was called "climatic change," other times it was "air pollution." The history of cautionary messages with the West Wing is documented in hundreds of records submitted in Juliana v. United States, a court case against the federal government. The files show an arc of steadily improving climate science and a clearer picture of damages, even as presidents diverged on how to address the problem. Read full story here.

Dam Problems, Win-Win Solutions

University of Maine – PHYS.org – November 5, 2018Decisions about whether to build, remove or modify dams involve complex trade-offs that are often accompanied by social and political conflict. A group of researchers from the natural and social sciences, engineering, arts and humanities has joined forces to show how, where and when it may be possible to achieve a more efficient balance among these trade-offs. Their work is featured in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Read full story here.

Facing Climate Change, States and Cities Seek to Borrow Billions

By Amanda Albright – Bloomberg – November 5, 2018Dan Gelber, the mayor of Miami Beach, Florida, says climate change will be a homeowners’ worst nightmare. "If you own a home and you find that your roof has a problem or you find out there’s a termite infestation, you have to take care of it," he said. "That’s what climate change is. Sea level rise has created challenges that have to be addressed. For local governments, they don’t go away unless you do something about them." That’s why Miami Beach, where frequent flooding prompted by high tides have illustrated the risks of climate change, is asking residents for the power to pump more money into environmentally-friendly sidewalks, parks, and neighborhood improvements. The $439 million bond bond proposal would use a fourth of the proceeds to address the effects of climate change. Read full story here.

Can Citizen Lawsuits Force Governments to Act on Climate Change?

By Fred Pearche – YaleEnvironment360 – November 1, 2018Are the courts now the arena of last resort for citizens hoping to force governments to take serious steps to slow global warming? Over the past several weeks, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its most dire warning to date, courts on two continents have weighed in on the issue, with dramatically different results. Read full story here.

Oil and Gas Leasing Delayed in Sage Grouse Habitat

By Carl Segerstrom – High Country News – October 31, 2018Throughout his tenure as Interior Department secretary, Ryan Zinke has tried to prime the pump for oil and gas leasing on public lands. Under his leadership, and in pursuit of the Trump administration’s “American Energy Dominance” directive, the Bureau of Land Management has increased the area offered for oil and gas leases and relaxed regulations for natural gas producers on public lands. But the BLM recently hit a snag in its push to lease more land for oil and gas production. In late September, a federal district court in Idaho issued a preliminary injunction stating that the Interior Department must hold off on energy leasing in sage grouse habitat to allow for more public participation. Because of the decision, oil and gas lease sales totaling more than 1 million acres and spanning six states have been delayed. Read full story here.

By Forbes Tompkins and Evan Chapman – PEW – October 19, 2018While the full extent of damage caused in the past two months by hurricanes Florence and Michael is still being calculated, initial estimates suggest Florence is one of the 10 costliest hurricanes on record and marked the 12th 1,000-year rainfall event the country has suffered since the beginning of 2016. Meanwhile, Michael became one of the four most intense hurricanes on record to strike the United States. Read full story here.

A Great Lakes Pipeline Dispute Points to a Broader Energy DilemmaBy Douglas Bessette – The Conservation – October 17, 2018 – VideoA deal involving an aging oil pipeline in Michigan reflects the complex decisions communities across the country need to make to balance the needs for energy and safety with efforts to deal with climate change. Gov. Rick Snyder and Enbridge, a Canadian company, have reached an agreement over a leak-prone pipeline that runs beneath the Straits of Mackinac, the 4-mile-long waterway that divides Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Rather than shut the 65-year-old pipeline down altogether, as environmentalists are demanding, or conduct routine maintenance, as Enbridge desired, Snyder is requiring Enbridge to replace the pipeline at an estimated cost of up to US$500 million without a deadline. Read full story here.

Watershed Groups Have a Positive Impact on Local Water Quality, Study Finds

By Chris Branam – PHYS.org – October 12, 2018Economists have found that in the United States, watershed groups have had a positive impact on their local water quality. The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is the first empirical evidence that nonprofit organizations can provide public goods, said Christian Langpap, an Oregon State University economist and study co-author with Laura Grant, an assistant professor of economics at Claremont McKenna College. In economics, a public good is a commodity or service that individuals cannot be effectively excluded from using, and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others. For these reasons, public goods can't be provided for profit and nonprofits can play an important role. Read full story here.

State News

AK: The Trump Administration Just Approved a Plan to Drill for Oil in Alaska’s Federal Waters. It’s a Major First

By Darryl Fears – The Washington Post – October 24, 2018Interior Department officials announced their approval Wednesday of a company’s plan to drill for oil six miles off the Alaskan coast in the shallow waters of the Beaufort Sea. If the development by Hilcorp Energy moves forward, it would be the first oil and gas production facility in federal waters in Alaska, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in the announcement, a major victory for the oil industry and a blow to conservation groups that fought it, fearing a possible leak in a sensitive and pristine natural environment. Read full story here.

By Bob Egelko – San Francisco Chronicle – November 9, 2018A federal judge barred the Trump administration Friday from approving oil companies’ requests to use the high-pressure drilling technique known as fracking in offshore wells along the Southern California coast until a review of the possible effects on endangered species and state coastal resources. In lawsuits by the state and environmental groups, U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez of Los Angeles said federal agencies that issue underwater drilling permits must consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, about the possible impact of fracking chemicals on sea birds and otters, before approving any permits for its use off Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties. Read full story here.

CA: New Hope for Southern California’s Besieged Wetlands

By David Colgan – UCLA Newsroom – November 1, 2018Under stress from development, pollution and a climate change-driven rise in sea level, California’s coastal wetlands are among the most threatened ecosystems on the planet. In fact, a UCLA study in February found that many large coastal wetlands, or salt marshes, could disappear entirely by the end of the century. Now, a new study has revealed a flicker of hope for the future of coastal wetlands in Southern California¬. We could actually end up with more wetlands than we have now — but only if swift action is taken. Read full story here.

CO: When in Drought: States Take on Urgent Negotiations to Avoid Colorado River Crisis

By Luke Runyon – NPR – October 14, 2018In 2007, years into a record-breaking drought throughout the southwestern U.S., officials along the Colorado River finally came to an agreement on how they'd deal with future water shortages — and then quietly hoped that wet weather would return. But it didn't. Those states are now back at the negotiating table to hammer out new deals to avoid a slow-moving crisis on the river system that supports 40 million people in seven Western states. Read or listen to full story here.

CT: Connecticut's Marshes: Past, Present, and Uncertain Future

By Elaina Hancock – UConn Today – November 15, 2018A troubling report issued recently by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that Earth is just two decades away from disastrously high levels of carbon in the atmosphere. As we approach those levels, there has been an increased focus on developing and using technology to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Yet nature already has some effective means to accomplish this – wetlands and marshes. Two assistant professors in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, Ashley Helton and Beth Lawrence, are studying the processes that occur in these complex ecosystems. “Globally, wetlands and marshes are one of the largest natural sinks for carbon,” Helton says. “We want to quantify what wetlands are doing in terms of how they impact various ecosystem functions.” Read full story here.

By Jenny Staletovich – Miami Herald – November 6, 2018 – VideoJust before Hurricane Michael made landfall last month, a ferocious red tide that had scoured Florida’s Gulf Coast for a year, depositing countless dead sea turtles, dolphin and other marine life on beaches before spreading to the Atlantic coast, had finally started to wane. In most places, with the wet season winding down and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers easing up on releasing polluted water from Lake Okeechobee, the toxic algae that had become a key election year campaign issue had dropped to relatively low levels. Fish kills were down and so were the coughing fits among beach-goers. But in the weeks following the storm, red tide that is already considered the worst in a decade has roared back. Read full story and view video here.

FL: Before and After: Coastal Change Caused by Hurricane Michael

Contact Jason Burton – USGS – October 18, 2018The USGS Coastal Change Hazards Storm team is working on a detailed assessment of Hurricane Michael’s effects on Florida’s vulnerable shorelines. The team is currently comparing low-altitude, high angle oblique aerial photos taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2017 to similar NOAA photos collected a day after Hurricane Michael made landfall. The USGS scientists are analyzing the photos, which document the hurricane’s impact on the coast, to fine-tune coastal change forecasting models. Read full story here.

ME: Consider the Lobster Tariffs

By Willy Blackmore – The Nation – November 5, 2018On a recent Saturday, a small outboard motorboat glided to a halt in the glassy waters just off the coast of Rockland, Maine. Idling next to a striped buoy, the fisherman began to pull up the line beneath it, a cage dangling with seaweed eventually emerging from the water. There was no lobster inside that trap, so he replaced the bag of herring bait and moved on to the next. He stopped the boat, pulled up the line, checked the trap, and grabbed the lobster that was inside, only to toss her—a female carrying eggs, which are illegal to keep—back into the water. For some coastal communities, including those on many of Maine’s offshore islands, lobstering isn’t seen as a good way to make a living; it’s the only way. That livelihood is now under threat. Read full story here.

ME: Why is the Gulf of Maine Warming Faster Than 99% of the Ocean?

By Laura Poppick – EOS – November 12, 2018Late last month, four endangered sea turtles washed ashore in northern Cape Cod, marking an early onset to what has now become a yearly event: the sea turtle stranding season. These turtles—in last month’s case, Kemp’s ridley sea turtles—venture into the Gulf of Maine during warm months, but they can become hypothermic and slow moving when colder winter waters abruptly arrive, making it hard to escape. “They are enjoying the warm water, and then all of a sudden the cold comes, and they can’t get out fast enough,” said Andrew Pershing, an oceanographer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine. Thanks to record-breaking summer water temperatures that quickly transition to cooler conditions, an expanded sea turtle stranding season is just one facet of a new normal for the Gulf of Maine, Pershing explained. And this new normal is a striking contrast to prior conditions. Read full story here.

MD: Maryland Receives Funds for Shoreline, Wetland Protection

November 2, 2018The U.S. EPA awarded $348,648 to the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) to improve and stabilize living shorelines, and stream and wetlands restoration projects in non-tidal wetlands. “Despite their environmental and economic importance, coastal wetlands in the eastern U.S. are being lost at twice the rate they are being restored,” said EPA Regional Administrator Cosmo Servidio, “This work by the state of Maryland will serve as a model for the more focused protection strategies that we need to reverse this trend.” Read full story here.

Contacts: Heidi Koontz – USGS News – October 25, 2018Beginning in early November and lasting for several months, a low-level helicopter will begin flying over parts of seven states in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, or MAP, to acquire a more robust picture of aquifers in the area. This high-resolution, airborne geophysical survey, coordinated by U.S. Geological Survey scientists in partnership with local agencies, will provide critical data for the evaluation and management of groundwater resources in the region. This survey represents the second phase of the study as initial flights and data acquisition over the MAP started in February using the same helicopter system. Read full story here.

NY: 3 Major Changes Will Transform Landscape of Staten Island’s West Shore

By Annalise Knudson – Silive.com – November 8, 2018Three major projects on Staten Island will transform Bloomfield -- a desolate neighborhood surrounded by marshlands previously used as dumping grounds. Two marshland projects -- at Saw Mill Creek and Old Place Creek -- will restore acres of wetlands, while the Matrix Global Logistics Park will operate four massive warehouses, including tenants like Amazon and Ikea. Read full story here.

NC: Grant to Support Harbor Shoreline Work

Coastal Review Online – November 14, 2018The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and its partner organizations last week awarded the North Carolina Coastal Federation $1.1 million for work to protect harbor shorelines in two coastal communities. Through the grant, the federation will work with local contractors to stabilize and protect the eroding shorelines by building living shorelines tailored to each site. Read full story here.

OH: Ohio’s Watershed Moment: How to Fix Lake Erie Algae

By Maria Gallucci – Grist – November 12, 2018The western tail of Lake Erie brims with life. Warm, shallow waters along the Ohio-Michigan border teem with bass, bluegill, and walleye, sustaining a billion-dollar fishing industry. Millions of people from Cleveland to Detroit draw their drinking water from this nook of the lake. Yet every summer, nasty blooms of toxic algae put the entire system at risk. Scummy blankets of blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, have appeared at alarming scales since the early 2000s, killing plants and fish and straining water treatment facilities. Four years ago, algal blooms were so bad that residents of Toledo were told not to drink or use tap water for three days. Scientists say they know the primary source of the blooms: phosphorus and nitrogen that wash off farms in northwest Ohio and flow into the lake. What’s less clear is how policymakers and farmers will act to stem the nutrient pollution. Read full story here.

By Phil McKenna – InsideClimate News – November 2, 2018As Puerto Rico rebuilds from last year's hurricanes, lawmakers on the island territory have introduced an ambitious clean energy bill that would commit Puerto Ric.to getting 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2050. Environmental advocates praised the proposed legislation's long-term target, but they are raising concerns about its emphasis on establishing privately owned natural gas power generation in the short-term, and about the beleaguered public utility's ability to meet the renewable energy goal. Read full story here.

UT: At its End, Utahns Worry About Bear River’s Future

By Leia Larsen – Standard-Examiner – November 4, 2018The Bear is the longest North American river that doesn't end in the sea.Its mouth is at the Great Salt Lake, America's Dead Sea, the bottom of a terminal basin. But even as it ends, the Bear River supports life and livelihoods. Its waters diffuse into abundant wetlands that support millions of migrating waterfowl and shorebirds. It has carved minerals from mountains over millennia, which have concentrated in the Great Salt Lake and now support multi-million-dollar extraction industries. Its nutrients feed algae in the lake, which in turn feed an abundance of brine shrimp. But mid-October this autumn, the river instead disappeared into a vast mudflat that used to be Bear River Bay. Read full story here.

VA: Report Details the Cost of Recycling Coal Ash in Virginia

AP News – November 14, 2018Dominion Energy said in a long-awaited report on Wednesday that it would cost billions of dollars to recycle Virginia’s toxic coal ash or move it to lined landfills, an endeavor that customers would pay for over several years. Environmental groups and some lawmakers said the cost would be well worth the effort as some aging storage facilities leak chemicals or potentially lay vulnerable to hurricanes. Read full story here.

WV: DEP Awards Stream Partner Grants

The Register-Herald – November 13, 2018The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) announced Tuesday the recipients of the 2019 Stream Partners Grants. The West Virginia Stream Partners Program is a cooperative effort between the Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry and the Soil Conservation Agency. The program has $100,000 annually appropriated to award to watershed associations interested in protecting and restoring state streams. This year 23 organizations received funds up to $5,000. Read full story here.

WV: WVU Researchers to Profile Wetlands to Set Water Standards

By Conor Griffith – The Morgantown News – November 5, 2018Equipped with federal grant funding, the WVU Institute of Water Security and Science will be able to develop and recommend wetland water quality standards for use by state and federal agencies. Through intensive research and analysis, the institute will assess and monitor more than 200 wetlands across the Mountain State, and in the process, establish numeric criteria for chemical constituents based on the type and location of the wetlands. The project is ultimately intended to figure out how to best identify and address pollution. Read full story here.

WY: Group Effort to Preserve Wyoming’s Wetlands, Water Resources

Buckrail – November 6, 2018 – VideoWater is scarce in Wyoming. Over the years, the arid state has lost more than a third of its wetland habitat. In an effort to conserve these important natural areas, three wildlife organizations came together to solve challenges facing wetlands. With the support of the Wyoming Bird Habitat Conservation Partnership, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and Ducks Unlimited developed a shared full-time wetlands specialist position to get conservation projects off the ground. Read full story here.

Wetland Sciece News

Part of the Answer to Climate Change May Be America’s Trees and Dirt, Scientists Say

By Brad Plumer – The New York Times – November 14, 2018When people think of potential solutions to global warming, they tend to visualize technologies like solar panels or electric cars. A new study published on Wednesday, however, found that better management of forests, grasslands and soils in the United States could offset as much as 21 percent of the country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. At the high end of the projections, that would be roughly equivalent to taking every single car and truck in the country off the road. The paper, published in the journal Science Advances, identified a number of promising strategies, like replanting trees on degraded lands, changing logging practices to better protect existing forests and sequestering more carbon in farmland soils through new agricultural techniques. Read full story here.

New Study Reveals Natural Solutions Can Reduce Global Warming

Contact: Kirsten Ullman – The Nature Conservancy – November 14, 2018Restoring the United States’ lands and coastal wetlands could have a much bigger role in reducing global warming than previously thought, according to the most comprehensive national assessment to date of how greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced and stored in forests, farmland, grasslands and wetlands. The peer-reviewed study in Science Advances from The Nature Conservancy and 21 institutional partners found that nature’s contribution could equal 21% of the nation’s current net annual emissions, by adjusting 21 natural management practices to increase carbon storage and avoid greenhouse emissions. The study is the first to include the climate benefits of coastal wetlands and grasslands in a comprehensive mix along with forests and agriculture. Read full story here.

Carbon Goes with the Flow

Michigan State University – PHYS.org – November 13, 2018Many people see the carbon cycle as vertical—CO2 moving up and down between soil, plants and the atmosphere. However, new Michigan State University research published in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters, adds a dimension to the vertical perspective by showing how water moves massive amounts of carbon laterally through ecosystems—especially during floods. These findings—which analyzed more than 1,000 watersheds, covering about 75 percent of the contiguous U.S. - have implications for climate change and water quality. Read full story here.

Shrinking Groundwater

By Harrison Tasoff – The Current – November 13, 2018 Groundwater, which has been used to irrigate crops, satiate livestock and quench thirst in general for thousands of years, continues to be a vital resource around the world. But according to research by Scott Jasechko and Debra Perrone, assistant professors at UC Santa Barbara, and their colleagues at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Arizona, the world’s supply of fresh water may be more limited than previously thought. Read full story here.

Streamside Forests Store Tons of Carbon

Environmental News Network – November 12, 2018Restoring degraded forests is a critical strategy for addressing climate change given the potential for forests to store significant amounts of carbon, both in the trees and the soil. However, despite extensive efforts to restore streamside forests globally, the carbon storage potential of these forests is often overlooked. In a new effort from Point Blue Conservation Science and Santa Clara University, researchers led by Dr. Kristen Dybala compiled carbon storage data from 117 publications, reports, and other data sets on streamside forests around the world. This inquiry is the first of its kind to evaluate global results on the potential carbon storage benefits of streamside forests. Read full story here.

Conservation Areas Help Birdlife Adapt to Climate Change

Environmental News Network – November 12, 2018A warming climate is pushing organisms towards the circumpolar areas and mountain peaks. A recently conducted Finnish study on changes in bird populations reveals that protected areas slow down the north-bound retreat of species. As the climate warms up, the belts of current climate conditions move further north, forcing species to follow the climate suited to them. At the same time, environmental transformation by humans is causing problems. Species are experiencing great difficulties in adapting simultaneously to a decrease in the quality of their habitat and the pressure brought on by climate change. Read full story here.

Estimating the Vulnerability of Ocean Planning and Blue Economy to Climate Change

MEAM – November 5, 2018Climate-related drivers of change – such as ocean warming, acidification, and deoxygenation – will alter ocean conditions and lead to changes in marine ecosystem structure and functioning, as well as the redistribution of the services that the oceans provide. As a consequence, human uses that rely on these services – fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism for example – will also undergo spatial and temporal changes at multiple scales. These changes will include local increases and decreases in intensity of uses and relocation of uses. Marine spatial planning (MSP) informs the distribution of ocean uses in space and time, and it will undoubtedly be affected by climate change at all scales ranging from global to local. MEAM discussed this with Catarina Frazão Santos, a research scientist with the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre at the University of Lisbon. She is currently leading the research project OCEANPLAN to understand how marine spatial planning may be affected by and adapt to global climate change. Read more here.

Water-Harvesting and Arid-Adapted Agrobiodiversity

By Gary Paul Nabhan – Anthropocene Magazine – November 2018Whenever I have a desire to be outside during the summer months as temperatures in Metro Tucson Arizona rise above 105 F, I select certain shady places where old trees offer me a break from the heat. Some are where old olive trees from north Africa were planted more than a century ago by agroecologist Robert Forbes, the first Dean of Agriculture at the University of Arizona. They are large and spreading, offering enough fruit each year for students to press their own delicious olive oil. Or I cross our now dry river—the Rio Santa Cruz—and sit in the shades of trees of quince, pomegranate and fig planted just seven years ago at Mission Gardens, ones which the first Spanish missionaries brought to the Sonoran Desert over three centuries ago. While global climate change and the urban heat island effect take their toll on the health of many humans as well as many annual crops, these resilient trees have stood the test of time. Heat and drought tolerant fruit trees have also stood the test of time in New Mexico, Baja California, the Canary Islands, Southern Spain, North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Despite their ecological adaptations that may offer us resilience in a hotter, drier world, they are hardly ever mentioned in the same breath with words such as climate change, food security or community resilience. Read full article here.

How Much Danger Are We in When Chemicals Are Spilled in Local Rivers?

By Susan Olsen, Purdue University – PHYS.org – November 1, 2018When a chemical spill in Elk River contaminated the drinking water of nearly 300,000 West Virginians in 2014, little was known about the contaminant MCHM, a type of methanol used industrially for cleaning coal. But now that it was in a local water source … is it a safety issue? Would exposure harm brain development in children? Jennifer Freeman, a Purdue University associate professor of toxicology, wanted to answer those questions, and her group conducted a toxicological assessment on the MCHM mixture that escaped Tank 396 that day. Read full story here.

Climate Change: ‘Wetlands Vital to Protect Cities’

By Navin Singh Khadka – BBC News – October 29, 2018Cities around the world are frequently flooding during extreme weather, largely because they are fast losing the wetlands that work as a natural defense, experts warn. Wetlands are ecosystems like lakes, rivers, marshes and peatlands, as well as coastal marine areas including mangroves and coral reefs. The experts say wetlands work as a giant sponge that soaks up and stores extra rainfall and water from storm surges. Conservation of these water bodies in urban areas was the focus of an international meeting on wetlands that concluded in Dubai on Monday. Read full story here.

Dredging and Wetlands Creation—an Environmental Success Story

By Judith Powers and Sean Duffy – Waterways Journal – October 22, 2018There are 6,800 acres of new marshland bordering the Passes of the Mississippi River—land that was created starting in 2011 by a coalition intent on stopping the loss of land in Louisiana at a rate once described as “a football field every hour.” The Mississippi River advocacy group Big River Coalition (BRC) has been working with the Corps and industry leaders to begin to reverse this trend in the birdfoot delta at the mouth of the river. The new marshland was created in the delta through beneficial use of maintenance-dredged material. An ongoing project at Head of Passes will create another 1,000 acres by the end of this year. Read full article here.

Climate Change Prompts a Rethink of Everglades Management

By Richard Blaustein – Science Magazine – October 19, 2018Efforts to restore the rich ecology of the Florida Everglades have so far focused on fighting damage from pollutant runoff and reestablishing the natural flow of water. But now, an expert panel is calling for federal and state agencies to reassess their plans in light of threats from climate change and sea-level rise. A congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, released on 16 October, asks the managers of the 18-year-old Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) to conduct a “midcourse assessment.” The new evaluation should account for likely conditions in the wetlands in “2050 and beyond” and model how existing restoration projects would fare under various sea-level rise scenarios. Read full article here.

Greenland’s Ice Sheets Hold Clues to Global Sea-Level Rise

By Kristen Popoe – National Geographic – October 19, 2018Word spread fast at the Kangerlussuaq International Science Support facility in Greenland: One of the bridges along Greenland’s longest road was now under the raging Watson River. Support facility in Greenland: One of the bridges along Greenland’s longest road was now under the raging Watson River. A research team was almost stranded on the far side of the bridge by the roaring water, and when they returned they warned Rutgers professor Åsa Rennermalm and her team, who were just about to head out to set up their field camp at the end of the road. Rennermalm opted to wait until the next morning when the temperature—and glacially fed river—would be lower to venture out to her research site. Read full article here.

Salty Water Causes Some Freshwater Harmful Algae to Release Toxins

Contacts: Barry Rose; Heather Dewar; Vic Hines – USGS – October 18, 2018A new U.S. Geological Survey laboratory study of two potentially toxic types of freshwater cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, found that exposure to salty water can damage the cyanobacteria cells’ walls, causing them to release their toxins into the water. The finding suggests that understanding the mixing of fresh and salt water, which takes place in many coastal water bodies around the world, will help researchers understand the toxic effects of these harmful algal blooms. Read full story here.

The Missing Turtles of the Anthropocene

By Brandon Keim – Anthropocene Magazine – October 17, 2018When one thinks of Anthropocene signifiers—the things that distant-future archaeologists will recognize as markers of how Earth’s basic processes took on a distinctly human tint—it’s usually novelties that come to mind. Things that, for better or worse, have been added to the planet’s biogeochemistry: concrete, plastic, radioactive debris, cities, mines, radically elevated greenhouse gas levels, and so on. But the Anthropocene can also be marked by what is missing. Such as: turtles. “Turtles are struggling to persist in the modern world, and that fact is generally unrecognized or even ignored,” write biologists led by Jeffrey Lovich of the U.S. Geological Survey in the journal BioScience.Read full article here.

Resources and Publications

Cross-Ecosystem Carbon Flows Connecting Ecosystems Worldwide

Nature Communications – November 16, 2018Ecosystems are widely interconnected by spatial flows of material, but the overall importance of these flows relative to local ecosystem functioning remains unclear. Here we provide a quantitative synthesis on spatial flows of carbon connecting ecosystems worldwide. Cross-ecosystem flows range over eight orders of magnitude, bringing between 10−3 and 105 gC m−2 year−1 to recipient ecosystems. Magnitudes are similar to local fluxes in freshwater and benthic ecosystems, but two to three orders of magnitude lower in terrestrial systems, demonstrating different dependencies on spatial flows among ecosystem types. The strong spatial couplings also indicate that ecosystems are vulnerable to alterations of cross-ecosystem flows. Thus, a reconsideration of ecosystem functioning, including a spatial perspective, is urgently needed. Read full story here.

Nature Communications – November 16, 2018Trade-offs and synergies in the supply of forest ecosystem services are common but the drivers of these relationships are poorly understood. To guide management that seeks to promote multiple services, we investigated the relationships between 12 stand-level forest attributes, including structure, composition, heterogeneity and plant diversity, plus 4 environmental factors, and proxies for 14 ecosystem services in 150 temperate forest plots. Our results show that forest attributes are the best predictors of most ecosystem services and are also good predictors of several synergies and trade-offs between services. Environmental factors also play an important role, mostly in combination with forest attributes. Read full story here.

Ecosystem-Based Adaptation: A Handbook for EbA in Mountain, Dryland, and Coastal Ecosystems

Krystyna Swiderska, Caroline King-Okumu, Md Monirul Islam – International Ecosystem Management Partnership – September 2018This handbook provides practical guidance for planning and implementing community-led ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) in three vulnerable ecosystems: mountains, drylands and coastal areas. It is intended for project managers, practitioners and technical specialists. The guidance is structured around eight key steps in the project cycle and includes general implementation protocols for EbA in each target ecosystem. It also includes an introduction to EbA which is intended for a broader audience, including policymakers. Download the Handbook here.

Potpourri

Improved Water Quality Starts at Home

By Jennifer Allen –Coastal Review Online – November 8, 2018Development is frequently associated with increased impervious land coverage, and that can often lead to more polluted runoff reaching ecologically sensitive streams, rivers and sounds. Hard surfaces such as pavement, roads, sidewalks and roofs affect water quality because the runoff, instead of soaking into the ground and being taken up by vegetation, quickly flows in greater amounts over the developed landscape and into surface waters, explained Lauren Kolodij, deputy director for the North Carolina Coastal Federation. This polluted stormwater runoff is often the primary cause of water quality degradation, which results in shellfishing waters failing to meet public health standards and why some coastal towns and counties post swimming advisories after it rains, she said. Read full story here.

As Courts Halt Keystone XL, Public Voices Opposition

NRDC – November 8, 2018Within hours of the close of the State Department's public comment period on their rushed Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS) for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, a federal court in Montana handed down a decision halting the project altogether and ordering the government to undertake a new, far more detailed look at the contentious project. The news came after more than 150,000 people once again voiced their opposition to the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. In public comments submitted in response the State Department’s DSEIS, commenters from across the country highlighted the unnecessary threats to endangered species, fresh water, farmland, and global climate posed by the pipeline. Read full story here.

How to Accelerate the Use of Natural Infrastructure to Aid Climate Change Adaptation

By Shannon Cunniff – Environmental Defense Fund – November 8, 2018Florida and North Carolina are once again recovering from hurricanes – this time, from two of the largest storms to hit our coasts in a century. In a climate-driven world, an important aspect of recovery is rebuilding in ways that make communities safer and more resilient to storms. One strategy for reducing future flood risks is restoring natural features such as barrier islands, dunes, wetlands and floodplains. These natural infrastructure solutions help slow storm surge and hold flood waters, reducing the devastating impacts of storms. Yet, despite what we know about the effectiveness of these features, natural infrastructure is still an underutilized resilience strategy. Read full blog post here.

IPCC Report and the Missing Dialogue in US Environmentalism

By Khalil Shahyd – NRDC – November 6, 2018The recent midterm elections will have far reaching implications with choices made on key ballot initiatives and between candidates who support plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) that cause climate change and those who have chosen to fight to preserve livelihoods based in industries rather than make the adjustments to cleaner future. Against the backdrop of the elections is the recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) reminding us that urgent and systemic changes are needed to cap rising temperatures due to global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. The report warns that we are not yet doing enough to avoid disaster. Read full blog post here.

Alaska Case Could be Landmark in Water Rights Disputes

By Tony Francois, opinion contributor – The Hill – November 5, 2018The fate of a moose hunter flying a hovercraft on an Alaska river will either protect or limit water uses across America, depending on how the Supreme Court rules after hearing argument today in Sturgeon v. Frost. This case involves John Sturgeon’s nearly decade-long legal battle with the National Park Service (NPS) over whether he can pilot his hovercraft upriver through Alaska’s remote national parks to access hunting grounds above them. Read full opinion here.

The Love and Lore of Lake Erie’s Wetlands

By James Proffitt WSKG November 2, 2018By the time dawn’s first vermilion fingers tickle the east’s black sky, hunters in a dozen-plus marshes have slogged, sometimes chest-deep, through marshes to arrive at blinds – often constructed, sometimes mostly natural – to await the arrival of ducks, large and small, drab and bright, slow and fast. It’s the love of waterfowl, and the storied history of their hunting in Ohio’s marshes, and on water everywhere, really, that inextricably connects the pursuit of these birds to the preservation and restoration of the habitat that is necessary for their survival. Read full story here.

Most Underestimate Minorities’ Environmental Concerns—Even Minorities

By Susan Kelley – Cornell Chronicle – October 29, 2018In a new study with implications for environmental organizations – and an indication that stereotypes are alive and well – most Americans underestimate just how concerned minorities and lower-income people are about environmental threats. This extends even to members of those groups: They themselves underestimate their peers’ concerns about environmental problems. Read full story here.

How the Farm Bureau’s Climate Agenda is Failing its Farmers

By Georgina Gustin, Neela Banerjee, John H. Cushman, Jr. – InsideClimate News –October 24, 2018 VideoDonald J. Trump's inaugural crowd may not have been the biggest ever, but his parade drew lots of tractors that rumbled past the presidential reviewing stand in a farm lobby phalanx. "The farmers and ranchers and the people in the Rust Belt came out and paved the road for President-elect Trump to make it to the White House," he told a reporterfrom RFD-TV, the network that organized the cavalcade. "We are here reinforcing that strength that we showed The Farm Bureau is among the most potent political forces in Washington, skillfully parlaying the American farmer into an enduring influence machine. Its agenda encompasses taxes and trade, health insurance and school lunches. The group's lobbying also touches many environmental issues: water pollution, fracking, biofuels and biodiversity. Conservative to the core, it mirrors the Trump administration's ideology almost perfectly.in rural America when we went to the polls and helped send him here." Nowhere do their agendas align more completely—and with more profound consequences—than on the challenge of climate change. Read full story here.

How Can We Reduce Losses from Coastal Storms? Monitor the Health of Our Coasts.

By John M. Carroll – The Conservation – October 17, 2018 – VideoWater insecurity is a touchstone for 2018. Our planet isn’t running out of water, but various kinds of mismanagement have led to local water crises across the planet, directly threatening millions of people. Ensuring water quality requires regular testing, protecting source water, monitoring and repairing distribution systems, treatment plants and other infrastructure, and developing the ability to recycle water and desalinate salt water. These activities require many types of specialists. But they can also benefit from the direct participation of engaged citizens, who themselves can also benefit from getting involved with this work. Read full story and view video here.